Black Beauty Chat: James Bronner Talks The Business Of Hair

SADIAA: You’ve made a lot of changes since assuming your new role, including placing high priority on the presence of beauty industry-related booths and companies and distinguishing between licensed and non-licensed attendees. What prompted them?
JB: The first thing I did [when I became Show Director], was conduct a survey to make sure that I was going to make the right changes that our core audience wanted.  We interviewed 700 stylists, barbers and beauty school students in the survey. I asked them the things they liked, the things they didn’t like and things they wanted to see. I read all 700 of those surveys personally and got an understanding first of what changes were needed.

SADIAA: Are there any other changes we should look forward to?
We’re looking to do more things with television to bring different concepts that we have in the pipeline that are unique to the industry. We want to not only have them at the show, but to have them nationally televised to increase that audience. We have, in past years, had the show in cities outside of Atlanta. My principal on that is I want to perfect Atlanta and get everything right and then we will look at other cities to take it closer to people that may be in other regions. So that’s a future expansion, as well.

SADIAA: Men have typically been the drivers of the hair industry. Do you get any pushback with that on your end? How do you see it changing?
JB: The past two generations [of our family] were only males, one of the differences is in the next generation — we have 30 and most of them are female. And, I do see them changing the landscape of what we all do. They may go from hair products into cosmetics, maybe even fashion, so we are training them now.

I think that’s something that’s probably been in multiple industries, so I think we will see a lot of change with that across the board. Maybe even in the next president.

A version of this article originally appeared in Hype Hair.